


to sleep, perchance to dream

by cyclopsBlinder (tereziswife2942)



Category: Homestuck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-24
Updated: 2013-02-24
Packaged: 2017-12-03 13:01:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/698531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tereziswife2942/pseuds/cyclopsBlinder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The beta kids' dreamselves all wake up in infancy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to sleep, perchance to dream

He finds her in the tower, levering himself over the window ledge and hauling the rope up behind so no curious carapaces can intrude. He’s breathing heavily and hunched over with his hands on his knees because while he’s still as active as ever age is catching up with him rapidly, as much as he’d like to deny it. Once mostly recovered, he walks over to the bed and leans over and gathers her into his arms. She burbles happily at him – she was always a happy infant, and months of no human contact seem not to have affected her disposition negatively. He smiles and croons softly at her, a wordless tune that he used to hum every night as he bundled her into the crib. She seems to recognize it still because she kicks her little legs excitedly and smiles back. He ambles back over to the window, swaying her in his arms rhythmically to entertain her. The crowd of carapaces below is ever bigger than before but they seem to have parted for some reason. A single carapace moves through the space created with a delicate grace. She is taller than any of the other curious little creatures and he notices an unobtrusive crown perched on her shiny round head, the same color as her shell. Though an utterly alien creature he finds he can call her nothing else but female, queenly in both manner and dressage as she is. He has met several queens in his lifetime but none, he thinks, as regal as she.  

 _Blessed guardian,_ she says, and it carries to his ears although she is speaking so soft and gentle. _Please leave our savior child and join us below. I will not harm you. I wish only to explain._

“All right,” he shouts down. This disturbs Jade, who voices her displeasure with a loud shriek. Was always happy child, but not afraid to let him know when she wasn’t. Chuckling, he turns about and places her back into the bed, but not before arranging the sheets just so on the mattress so she has something more substantial into which to snuggle. When he leans down to kiss her forehead she tugs on his mustache and giggles at his attempt to extricate her tiny fingers from the wiry hairs. Finally he throws the rope over the ledge and makes his descent slowly. He doesn’t have to work as hard: the holes he made with golden spikes ripped from another building work fine as footholds on the way down. It’s considerably less winding too, which he is extremely grateful for as he drops to the ground and manages an artful bow to the royal carapace. She inclines her head to him and says _Shall we have a private audience? My palace is not far from here._

“Sounds copacetic to me,” he replies, and twirls his mustache a bit. It’s always good to turn the charm on around nobles, especially when they appear to have an alternate version of your comatose granddaughter in their custody. He’s not sure how to interpret carapacian body language but he’s fairly certain she’s laughing silently.

 

* * *

 

She explains everything to him, face impassive though the facts that she supplies are both fantastical and disheartening. He cannot take Jade because she is not his Jade, she is their champion, and her body must be here when the Game starts. What is the Game, he asks her and she tells him of children attaining mythical roles and godhood and shaping the very nature of the universe and littering time paradoxes everywhere they tread. It has not yet come to be in his world but it will, because their champions lie in their towers and thus the stage is already set for it to begin. She admits that the Prospitians – for that is the name for the inhabitants of this golden city – did not expect their champions to wake so early, but perhaps it is for the best so that they can learn of it and be prepared when it comes. She tells him not to worry because their earthly bodies will wake once the Game begins; otherwise, they could not play it. So I can bring her back with the Game, he summarizes. Yes, she says, but he sees in her resigned tone it is not that simple. It is enough for him. He found other things in the temple that had the transport pad, runes on the walls and sheaves of paper filled with tiny chickenscratch notes and he wonders if they have to do with the Game too. He thanks her and takes his leave, back through the transport pad and into the depths of the temple to research. He’s never adventured with a purpose before and doesn’t like the way his heart weighs heavy with responsibility. “But I’ll bring her back, by Jove!” he tells himself, and that’s that.

Her body, strangely enough, does not waste away. Her muscles do not atrophy. Perhaps it is because the muscles of her other body are being exercised. She just sleeps and her breathing is gentle and never disturbed for even a moment. There was an earthquake in the Frog Temple (a rather uncreative title but he was never good with that kind of thing, he named his granddaughter after his own ship for god’s sake), so he cannot return through the transport pads to see her waking body again. He has the notes and other paraphernalia collected from the depths, however, and though it looks like gobbledygook to him he is sure he can find someone to whom it makes sense. He recalls the bright, beautiful orb he’d seen above Prospit. The white queen had called it Skaia, so he calls his company SkaiaNet. Soon enough he receives communication from a young woman scientist. R. Lalonde has observed unusual astronomical phenomena of the kind he has described on his (very basic) website firsthand and wants to know how she can help with the research he is interested in. She’s highly experienced with coding as well and inserts a few passive-aggressive comments about his website design. He likes her immediately. He doesn’t hire people who coddle him just because of his money or family. The two of them set out to develop the Game. They never meet in person because he doesn’t want to leave Jade’s side and Lalonde is “not intrsestd in paddlin out to bumfukc ilsand thank u vrey much” which he is disappointed about because she has fine taste in alcohol and he’s got a couple bottles of vintage wine saved for Jade’s eighteenth that he somehow knows he’ll never use for that occasion.

It’s slow going. Jade is growing right under his gaze, the clothes he buys her every few months upped a size, then another size, and a size and a half again. Lalonde reports a similar experience. “She’s growing up soooo pretty,” she mourns in a call that was supposed to be a report but ended up as a whining session when she dived into the alcohol halfway through. “I wish she could grow up like a normal little girl. I’d buy her a pony and all the dresses she wants, or if she didn’t like dresses I’d get her a totally bitchin’ pantsuit.” He chuckles and agrees with her desires. Jade is lovely, all dusty dark skin and a big mass of soft curls tumbling over the pillows. He reminds her a little bit of Jane which just makes it hurt even more that she’s trapped in sleep. The gun he’d ordered especially for her is propped up against the desk next to her bed.

“She’ll wake up eventually, and you’ll be there for her,” he tries to comfort Lalonde. She sniffles a bit.

“But like, she’s been awake on this crazy magic city planet this whole time. She prob’ly won’t even remember me, what if she thinks I’m just some weirdo lady?” she mourns. He hears a curse – probably spilled her drink on herself again.

He doesn’t really have a good answer to that, he thinks. It worries him constantly too. But all he says is, “Well you’ll just have to show her how much you love her, by Frigglish’s wriggly beard!” She giggles at that and allows him to steer the conversation into less disheartening territory.

 

* * *

 

Bro Strider has never been particularly fond of the law, so he’s not uncomfortable with avoiding the consequences of having an eight-year-old who technically shouldn’t exist in his apartment. When friends visit, the kid’s room is locked firmly. When he heads to work, he booby-traps every window and the entry hall. No one is the wiser; after all, who would expect a high school dropout in his late twenties whose interest in puppetry borders on the perverse and whose main form of heartfelt communication is rap battles to be raising a child? The first week of nonresponse he’d been determined to take Dave to the hospital, but then he’d received an array of medical machinery in the mail from an obscure company that didn’t even come up on google searches beyond its home website, though it had a pretty nice design. He appreciated the whimsical spinning titles and pink palette. Unconventional but perfectly coded. And so he slips into a routine: go to work, feed on and check Dave, go to work again, feed Dave and change diaper, go to DJ gig (that doesn’t really count as work). Whenever he has free time, he reads to the sleeping form beside him, at first kid’s books like _Goodnight Moon_ and _Where the Wild Things Are_ , but then he figures why not kick it up a level, not like the little dude can understand anyways, so from then on it’s scifi, fantasy, historical fiction, and even the occasional romance novel. Hey, Nicholas Sparks knows how to write a love story. Sometimes he wishes so much that Dave was awake and really alive because he has so much to teach him. The fridge of shitty swords rarely gets opened any more. He goes through practice moves on the roof and the swish of air is a piss-poor substitute for an opponent. Sometimes he gets this feeling, this sureness that Dave will just sit up one day and say _Hey bro, wanna strife?_ So he sits by the bed, wiping the sweat from his pale forehead and says “Listen little man, when you wake up I am gonna kick your ass into the next state.”

 

* * *

 

They let him take John home in a month, which confuses the hell out of him, but who is he to question such a blessing? There’s nothing else they can do, and nothing he can either but to keep watch by his side. The medical bills would be enormous, but they are, mysteriously enough, paid off by an anonymous benefactor. He wonders if it has to do with his mother’s connection to the Crocker family, but that wouldn’t make sense, he’s not entitled to a penny of their fortune and he’s never been contacted by them.

He wants to decorate John’s room for him, to act like he’s just sleeping and will resume being a normal little boy when he turns his back, but he doesn’t even know what elementary-aged boys like any more. Growing up, his mother taught him to love baking and japery and that’s what most of his early life revolved around, but somehow he feels that pranking is not as popular any more. He looks up Colonel Sassacre on Amazon once and his famous tome doesn’t even go for upwards of $30 and the reviews are all three stars or less. Blasphemy. Instead, he puts up pictures of the city and postcards that he bought in tourist shops. He tacks up the articles about meteor impacts he’d researched on the wall too, just to remind himself that there could be someone else out there who knows what’s going on.  If – _when_ – he arises, he’ll see how beautiful it is here in the world of the waking. 


End file.
